14 DAY TRIAL // Crystal Renn is perhaps one of the few models to make the transition from size 0 to plus size and still be successful. She’s now thin again but she still feels pressure from the media to look a certain way, she says in a new video.
Renn, who famously broke her silence on the fashion industry in her book “Hungry,” speaking of how she developed anorexia because designers wouldn’t work with her unless she was thinner, went on to become the highest paid plus-size model in the world.
She was, at the time, a size 14, which may seem normal for the rest of us, but is actually a lot in the industry.
Over the past year, Renn has been losing weight: she says she’s working out more and generally keeping more active, but insists she’s not on a diet.
After years of speaking in favor of curves, Crystal slowly shed them – and is now closer to a supermodel, even though she’s miles away from a size 0.
In a video for the Ford modeling agency, Renn speaks of the pressure that came with being a plus-size model, saying it’s just as bad as back in the day when she was skinny.
In fact, she’d probably have to develop another eating disorder just to maintain her curvy figure and thus live up to the label placed on her.
“I think that by placing a title on my head – which is plus size – and the picture that people have placed in their mind about what plus size is – I’ll basically fail you just with that. Because I couldn’t possibly live up to that,” Crystal says in the video embedded at the end of the article.
“And at this point in my life, I would actually have to have another eating disorder to live up to that expectation,” she adds.
It’s the same situation she’s already been through, but in reverse. Now, just like then, it’s the media and the public that put the most pressure on her to look a certain way.
“I had anorexia because ultimately, someone else set the standard for me and I wanted to follow it. If I followed what the public wanted from me, or what the media wants from me, I would be doing the same thing. I would have a binge-eating disorder,” Renn explains.
“It’s about individual health. You cannot tell if someone’s healthy, or where they are mentally from what’s going on on the outside – because health is different for everybody. At different sizes,” the model adds.